pect some help. but what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card. spends like cash. feels like membership. good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes. four shootings and a stabbing left seven people dead yesterday in chicago. a city that led the nation in murders last year. and president obama in an interview with the relaunched new republic said about the dangers of head injuries in football, that if he had a son he would, quote, think long angd hard before i let him play. right now i am joined by the director of the new internationalism project, horace campbell, professor of african politics at syracuse university,

irshad manji, author, and an independent africa policy analyst and researcher and former executive director of the washington, d.c., based group africa, action. outgoing secretary of state hillary clinton and before the senate foreign affairs committee wednesday less than a month after being hospitalized with a blood clot to testify about the attack at benghazi. it killed ambassador chris stevens and three other americans. senator marco rubio of florida was one of the three that asked sensible questions about lapses in security at the consulate. >> were you ever asked to participate in any sort of internal or interagency meeting before this attack with regard to the deteriorating security situation in libya? >> with specific security requests, they didn't come to me, i had no knowledge of them.

>> for the most part, though, republicans seemed to obsess over the comments of the u.s. ambassador to the u.n. susan rice over double talk, alleged coverup and whether rice purposely underplayed the terrorist connection and underscored protests to an anti-muslim film. >> we were told there were protests and an assault sprang out of that and that was not the fact and the american people could have known that within days and they didn't know that. >> with all due respect, the fact is we had four dead americans. was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd they'd go kill some americans. what difference at this point does it make? it is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator. >> hillary clinton was a strong advocate for the u.s. military intervention that helped remove moammar gadhafi in 2011 and it will probably be seen as one of the defining moments of her

tenure. the question now is whether our enter sflengs libya has produced the unintended consequence of powering j powering jihadists and how to manage that in what is now a heavily armed region in the world. in algeria people seized control of a gas refinery and in mali, a land-locked country that borders algeria, french forces have intervened. clinton warned the u.s. cannot permit mali to become a safe haven but the problem for policy makers is a regional one. >> the arab revolutions have scrambled power dynamics and shattered security forces across the region. instability in mali has created an expanding safe haven for terrorists who look to extend their influence and plot further attacks of the kind we saw just last week in algeria. >> i also want to bring in robin

wright, a joint fellow at the u.s. institute of peace. robin, just jump in any time. the first place i want to start is there's an economist, very provocative economist cover this week with a clutched gun saying afriganistan. the idea being north africa will be the new afghanistan. i want to start with the libya moment because it seems like that's kind of a counter factual fork in the road. the question is how much of this is the result of the nato intervention. as someone who's studied this region and i have to say i was reading your congressional testimony about north africa yesterday, it's incredibly prophetic, you've gone before congress many times, how much do you see the intervention in libya as a moment that pushed us toward these effects we're now

seeing? >> i think it did push us entirely. the question for me was, was it intended, was it ignored? because i think where i differ with some people, we have to remember what happened before the intervention. we have to remember that they requested intervention. we have to remember that gadhafi was threatening to hand down all the people in the streets. we also have to remember that at that time the revolution had started in tunisia and it had jumped to egypt and so it seemed to me that if you have a choice between not allowing people to be mowed down in the streets, you do that. now the link i see with other places is once you intervene, probably the intervention is always easy, it is the aftermath. >> that's what we learned. >> and i think the question that i haven't had a satisfactory answer to is how is it that with all the worries over the weapons

from gadhafi's arsenal flowing out, no one saw all these fighters, at least officially, we didn't see the fighters, we didn't know who they were and they went all the way into mali. when mali shares no border with libya. >> let's walk through the causal connection. there's a few things here. there's a lot of arms that flowed out in the aftermath, right? >> yes. >> so those arms have sort of gone out into north africa. that's part of the problem. there's a cadre of fighters that colonel gadhafi had hired as mercenaries and when gadhafi was being routed they fled out to the north of mali so those are the two causal links. >> yes. >> i want to ask you, robin, does the state department -- does hillary clinton and the obama administration view the libya intervention as a success? how much did they view that intervention as what precipitated the set of effects afterwards? >> militarily the intervention by nato in libya was clearly

judged widely as a success. it forced gadhafi out of power and it changed a state that had been among the most draconian in its practices at all levels into something that opened up hope for six and a half million people. the problem is the united states has never been very good, whether it's in afghanistan, iraq, in creating an alternative and the bol line is the united states basically walked away when it came to how do you create a new state, how do you facilitate the diverse forces, whether it's the tribal elements, more than 300 militias that had formed during that brief eight-month involvement, how do you stem the flow of weaponry and create an alternative. if you saw charlie wilson's war, at the very ending of the movie when he says i raised all this money, billions of dollars for arms to the opposition to fight off the soviets but i couldn't raise a couple of million

dollars for education. it's the same kind of problem. we're not good at figuring out what alternatives are and as a result libya destabilized and a lot of the arms that went into libya, a lot of the forces that were militarized flowed not just into mali and algeria but across a huge chunk of northwest africa. as a result you see a huge destabilization that's affect in turn little tunisia in between algeria and libya, it has affected egypt. there is a whole section of africa that is very vulnerable to jihadist extremists. >> you know, i think that's what important here is that while it may have been unintended that this would empower a wide range of militarized forces, it's not only, quote, jihadists but a lot of people with a lot of guns. but it was not unanticipated. it was talked about widely. it was anticipated that it would happen more inside libya rather than over libya's borders, through algeria into mali but it

was certainly anticipated this was exactly what was going to go on. by the time of the intervention, we should not forget inside libya, libya was an ally of the united states. now, it wasn't a great ally, we didn't maybe, quote, like it but it was an ally. gadhafi had given up his nuclear weapons, had given up everything that had made him a supposedly resistance hero in parts of the world and he was now allied wih the u.s., with italy, with france, with you'europe. so this notion that we had to intervention, there were threats, no doubt about it, against his population. but the idea that there was going to be an attack that was both inevitable and imminent in benghazi simply was not the case. >> well, i think it's contested intensely now. >> exactly. >> and i think one of the reasons i think it's important to kind of -- it may seem weird, why are we relitigating libyan intervention. >> because of the impact.

>> and because of the first time around it never got litigated, right? and what happened -- and what's weird about the whole benghazi issue to me, this is kienlds nd weird, it's a way of talking about the libyan intervention now after the fact because we have these deaths and this tragedy and this cascade of effects pause we never talked about it the first time. >> but we're not talking about it now either, chris. >> in a very remote and oblique way. >> we're only talking about the consulate issue and chris stevens, not the policy in libya that led to that. >> i don't want to take anybody away too long from libya and north africa, that's the focus of today's -- this morning's panel, but i think all of what has been said this morning so far really helps explain, at least in part, why the u.s. government is so reticent to help syrians. >> yes, right. >> because, as was pointed out during kerry's confirmation hearing for secretary of state this past week, you know, when

john mccain said are we or are we not the friends of the syrian people? it was senator kerry who pointed out that, you know, this is a country not unlike many in the region that has so many dimensions to it, not the least of which is what happens, you know, once the various sectarian factions, sunni, shia, drews, et cetera, how do they play out? what happens with the kurds? where are the arms going? where is the money going? and in a way -- sorry, just to finish up the point. in a way this is the obliqueness phyllis is talking about. nobody is going to say look at what has happened with libya. they're not going to say that, obviously. but this is part of the lesson learning mission that soon-to-be secretary kerry is on and needs to be on in order to figure out how do we not be part of the problem anymore. >> that's absolutely right. it's libya we did intervene and syria we are intervening in the

sense of we're sending money and helping other people send weapons so it's not like we're sitting by. but in terms of what happened at libya, that has been the lesson learned to the extent we can. my sense is that your feelings about the libyan intervention are different than these and i want to get your sense of what the effects are after we take a quick break. zzzquil sleep-aid. [ snoring ] [ snoring ] [ male announcer ] it's not for colds. it's not for pain. it's just for sleep. [ snoring ] [ male announcer ] because sleep is a beautiful thing. [ birds chirping ] zzzquil -- the non-habit forming sleep-aid from the makers of nyquil. have you tried this yet? save on zzzquil and other innovative products with the january 27th p&g brandsaver.

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let me underscore the importance of the united states continuing to lead in the middle east, in north africa and around the world. we've come a long way in the past four years and we cannot afford to retreat now. when america is absent, especially from unstable environments, there are consequences. extremism takes root, our interests suffer, our security at home is threatened.

>> i thought that was such -- that's hillary clinton testifying this week and i thought that line was so important because it kind of disstills down i think the operational theory in intervention here or american leadership, which is when america is absent, especially from unstable environments, there are consequences. extremism takes root, our interests suffer, security at home is threatened. horace, that seems like a proposition you don't agree with and libya was a failed implementation of that view. >> first of all, hillary clinton has a very short memory, so the kind of leadership she's talking about, we have to be very clear, what kind of leadership we want in africa. the people in africa want peace. they want unity and they want reconstruction. they do not want wars. and what happened in libya is a sign of the kind of militarism we've seen all over africa from the u.s. africa command. 50,000 libyans have been killed out of this intervention. the whole region of north africa has been destabilized.

there are 1700 militias running around libya today. the u.s. ambassador has been killed. the united nations is calling for a full review. what the united states need is to have a review of its whole africa command and to withdraw its military forces. there's no need for the united states to be engaged with africa through the military. africa needs dentists, students, they need engineers, they need teachers, they need doctors, not the military. so what the leadership that hillary clinton is talking about is not what africa needs. what we've seen from the initiative and the u.s. training of these militarists are the very same people who are creating the problems in north africa. >> i think people may not know this. up until 2007 there was no distinct central africa command in terms of the way the pentagon cleaved the world.

in 2007 there was africa command and it currently is stationed in europe, not actually in africa. there have been a variety of initiatives to train the soldiers of different african regimes, counterterrorism training, other kinds of training and in fact the soldiers of mali. mali was one of the star pupils in the -- >> and they're the same people now we're fighting. >> right. so i want to turn to mali in a second but first i want to push back -- not push back but to play devil's advocate about this intervention question on libya. when you look at all the negative consequences of libya, what do you say to the point about syria? everything that you could say about libya, weapons, destabilization, refugees, everything that's terrible about what has been the fallout of libya seems to me happening in syria as well where there hasn't been the same intervention and so maybe it's just the nature of the conflict as opposed to what the u.s. or the west does. >> no, that's a copout.

it's not the nature of the conflict. the very same jihadists who were called terrorists in 2000, the libya islamic fighting group who were called terrorists, they were the same people financed to overthrow the gadhafi regime. so all of these organizations that are now in benghazi creating problems are the ones who were being financed by the cia to go to syria. so the united states cannot create terrorists and then go and fight them and to tell people that they are creating stability in the world. >> phyllis. >> but that's exactly what the u.s. does. this is what the u.s. did in afghanistan, this is what we're seeing there, where the u.s. supported and armed a whole group of islamist fighters throughout the 1980s to fight the soviet union and then suddenly now we're back fighting them directly. but i think if we look at syria, it's very important to take what he said to the next point. i think this means there should not be military intervention. i mean there is already military

intervention. the cia is orchestrating who gets the weapons. the u.s. military is helping to facilitate all of that so we are intervening in syria. >> there's not military intervention explicitly from our forces. >> explicitly, yeah, but it's getting closer to that. but i think the problem here is we're looking at a scenario where we're denying that the actual opposition in syria began and still has a crucial component, which is calling for nonviolence, political revolutionary processes. >> they can call -- >> no, no, chris, their voices are being drowned out by this massive militarization. >> but the massive militarization is the product of -- >> it's both. there's an internal part and external part and they come together in the form of weapons and that is what has drowned out these voices that are still there. it's incredible brave ry coming out in the cities of syria in the midst of the bombing and the midst of the attacks to say we

want a different kind of government here but we don't want foreign intervention. >> what we have seen is that in the cauldron of war and in the cauldron of violence, it is often the case that liberal, secular, nonviolent voices are diminished while the people with guns rise up. >> that's what it facilitates by sending all these weapons. that's what happens. that the people who have the weapons suddenly have the face. >> i am just saying that that same process has played out in a million different environments which the u.s. had nothing to do with. >> not in in a million. >> i'm just saying this is a dynamic of armed conflict. >> in recent history that has been the rule of the united states of america. >> robin, let me ask you very quickly. because i want to turn to mali because that's the place where the heat is now on because we have an explicit western intervention, 2300 french troops. do you think the state department is -- what is their perspective on the french intervention in mali and what

they are doing there. is this worrying the obama administration? is there support for this? >> well, obviously the united states is providing refueling facilities for the french warplanes so, yes, the united states is playing a role already. i think there are no comfortable choices and that's one of the realities across the region today, whether it's in mali or syria, post revolution egypt and libya. the united states doesn't have a grand strategy. it's looking at each case individually. the reality is that with islamists taking over northern mali, which is larger than france, just that part of it, this then creates a greater threat throughout the region. and unfortunately the outside world dithered for way too long in trying to figure out a response and to the earlier point, the fact is the africans can't do it themselves. there's been talk for two decades about creating an africa rapid deployment force and they haven't been able to bring it together, provide training,

cohesion, command and control and as a result there is no local or regional alternative. >> africans -- it's opportunism on the part of france to go into mali when there was a plan by the african union and united nations security council. the united states nations security council resolution did not mandate france to go in. with the history of france in africa, africans on the whole are opposed to french intervention. >> let me pause that for a second because robin just mentioned the world dithered. and again six months ago, eight months ago you were testifying before congress saying the situation in mali is very bad, it's very unstable and i want you to set up the parameters of what we're discussing because i think it's confusing to a lot of folks right after we take this break. omnipotent of opportunity. you know how to mix business... with business. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle.

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what is the lay of the land in mali that has brought us to this point? >> it's popularly said and i agree that mali has four crises. it descended into full crises back in january of 2012. you have the libyan intervention that brought in the arms and, therefore, the civil war restarted. >> so there had been a civil war. it had kind of abated and it started in the wake of -- restarted in the wake of libya. >> the fourth round. actually the first round was in 1962, two years after mali became independent. so you've got the war restarting. then three months after that you've got the coup. overthrowing the government that had two months to go and was about to hold elections. so that's the second crises. >> democratically elected leader, two months from ending his term. there's a civil war that has restarted. the military is angry at the leadership because they feel they're not getting support at

the civil war. >> but that military was trained by the united states. the captain who overthrew the government was trained by the united states. six times he came to the united states and then went back and had a coup attack. >> and that wasn't the first time a u.s.-trained soldier. the president was trained by the u.s. one month after he got back to gambia he made a coup. >> of that coup, this u.s.-trained soldier in mali, the u.s. unlike a lot of other international bodies did not condemn the coup. >> precisely. i think that is something that is missed and i think it's very important because when the coup happened, everybody, the united nations, the african union, even the world bank were condemning the coup. the state department spokesperson after they had an interagency meeting said we are not sure we can call it a coup. the soldiers had grievances, they need to talk to them and now they have changed their tune. but i think it's very important

to ask why they didn't condemn it as a coup. so we go to the third problem, of course, which now gets state department attention, which is the terrorist problem. the fact that you've got three jihadist groups in the north. aqim. >> the movement for oneness in jihad and a third. >> these are jihadist groups who have taken over control. now, they were aligned but once they won and declared independence of what they call northern mali, their allies shoved them aside and said forget about your independence, we are here to implement sharia law and the fourth crisis of mali is of course humanitarian because it is the sahara desert. there are food problems every year so people are already moving out, looking for food and water. so you've got those four.

but i think the fifth thing that should be added and i don't see it added enough is contagion. if this were happened on an island nation -- this has a great potential of destabilizing all of west africa. >> and much of europe. much of europe as a result of the proximity between the two. >> and let me just -- i want to hone in on this one crucial dynamic which is there is essentially a civil war that was largely a civil war about these ethnic division. a distinct ethnic group were fighting for self determination. they partnered with largely foreign fighters who are explicit jihadis who once they get in the partnership the jihadis threw them overboard and have taken over. >> except one of the three jihadi organizations if we're going to use that term is a tuwarig-based.

so it's not like there's bad jihadis outside and good ones over here. there's a lot of intersection. >> hold that thought, i want to get your response to this and talk about what to do next, how to move forward. is there an out for france? is there an out for everyone in this? >> out is the key word. >> i think everyone wants an out after the break. look what mommy is having. mommy's having a french fry. yes she is, yes she is. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. 100% vegetable juice, with three of your daily vegetable servings in every little bottle. thor gets great rewards for his small business! your boa! [ garth ] thor's small business earns double miles on every purchase, every day! ahh, the new fabrics. put it on my spark card. ow. [ garth ] why settle for less? the spiked heels are working. wait! [ garth ] great businesses deserve great rewards. [ male announcer ] the spark business card from capital one. choose unlimited rewards with double miles or 2% cash back on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet?

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so we have a current situation now in which the french have intervened. in fact there's news reports this morning that they have taken a major strategic city that was held by -- i'm not sure of the right term, the islamists, let's say that. so the question now is now what? this seems like the classic kind of quick sand intervention. >> i think the u.s. is in my mind preferable to the french. horace and i will agree that the french has a horrible record in africa. >> they were the colonial rulers of this area. >> the french were particularly

bad. maybe the portuguese would have rivaled them but they had a bigger area. so i'm uncomfortable with them. but if the terrorists, jihadists, i'm glad somebody stopped them because it gives me nightmares of what would have happened if they had gotten into bama bamaku. the u.s. has civil society traditions that will hold the government's feet to the fire. whatever they are doing in mali. >> you sound like john bolton, dude. >> i'm only saying comparatively i don't see that in france, okay. if you look at french policy, whichever side of the aisle, everybody just says, oh, it's africa, let our government do whatever it wants. but you have the anti-apartheid

movement and i would prefer the u.s. to france. >> robin, robin -- robin, you wanted to jump in. >> i do. whether it's the united states or france, the reality is that military force is not going to solve the problem alone. bombing attacks are not going to remove the jihadists or the -- not address the core issues that have divided mali. and this is where you need a really much longer term solution, and this is where the united states has talked about smart power that's not just defense and diplomacy but also includes economic development. and that's really the key in trying to deal with the intense poverty and sense of need and desperation in this large and strategically located african nation. i was in bamaco in the 1990s during the first visit of the secretary of state and the great question was mali as a model for africa, could you have democracy

endure in a country which doesn't have much of a middle class, where poverty is so rampant and doesn't have a whole lot of outside aid to help it develop. and so the great question is not just how many resources are devoted right now to get rid of the jihadists, extremists, marginalize, recapture the north, allow for democratic elections to put back a representative government, but what do you do, what does the outside world do to create a viable state and stabilize -- create a model all over again in this region now of deep instability? >> the outside world can't ever do that in my view. i don't think it's ever succeed eld. that has to come from inside. the kinds of intervention that we're seeing is solely aimed at the military part. and what we're already seeing is that french planes have killed civilians in various cities. >> all of the discussion have ignored the people of mali. all of the discussion about what to do ignore the fact that

there's a civil society in mali. that they are people who want peace and the malian people do not want the military. >> as robin pointed out, the world has ignored already what africans wanted. africans went to the united stations security council for months asking for a mandate to intervene. we all dithered. now, frankly, given the destruction and the sheer inhumanity, barbarity of sharia law that has taken hold in mali, it is time for military intervention. i strongly support the french but i am very glad that the united states did not take the role that the french have because, of course, the world would be up in arms about that. i think that now is the time for the united states to seriously think through what kind of humanitarian assistance can it give mali since the french are doing the dirty work, it's time for the united states to get smart about soft power. >> horace, i want you to have

the last point here. >> i think anyone who talks about france intervening in africa to help africans do not have a sense of the history of the destruction and killing and the torture that has been carried on by the french. this is an opportunist move by france -- >> we're talking about now. >> to preempt work that was being done by africa and by africans. who wanted to go in? what we've seen in somalia, that after all the talk of somalia, it was the african troops who cleaned up the somalia institution. in the final analysis it will be africans on the ground to solve the problem. >> horace campbell and nii, thank you for joining us this morning. that was fascinating. there were so many different perspectives there that i had not been anticipating.

rooting for an american intervention over the french. hillary clinton's legacy as secretary of state. this is just one part of it. let's look at a broader picture after this. twins. i didn't see them coming. i have obligations. cute obligations, but obligations. i need to rethink the core of my portfolio. what i really need is sleep. introducing the ishares core, building blocks for the heart of your portfolio. find out why 9 out of 10 large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. risk includes possible loss of principal.

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welcome back. josh trevino former speechwriter in the george w. bush administration and now at the texas public policy foundation and ambassador swanee hunt who served as u.s. ambassador to austria, now a lecturer at harvard's kennedy school of government. we have just been talking as you saw in a very heated fashion about the situation in north africa and i think that's one core part of the legacy of the first administration's foreign policy and hillary clinton's tenure at state and i think the

defining external event to the administration of foreign policy has been the arab spring, obviously, and all that uncorked and how to manage that. but before we get to that, we still have robin on satellite. i want to talk about the relationship between the president and hillary clinton and the degree to which the legacy of foreign policy in the first term has been hillary clinton's legacy and the degree to which it really has been -- the shots have been called from the white house because a lot of reporting on this has been very interesting. tonight there's going to be an interview on "60 minutes" that's a joint interview between the president and hillary clinton, a joint exit interview, and this is what the president had to say about hillary clinton's legacy. >> hillary will go down as one of the finest secretary of states we've had. it has been a great collaboration over the last four years. i'm going to miss her. i wish she was sticking around. but she has logged in so many miles i can't begrudge her to want to take igt eat easy for a little bit. but i want the country to appreciate just what an

extraordinary role she's played during the course of my administration and a lot of the successes we've had internationally have been because of her hard work. >> robin, as someone who's covered this administration, one of the things you hear from reporters who cover it is that the biggest strategic foreign policy calls have been very tightly held in the white house and not made in state. and that state's portfolio and hillary clinton's portfolio has been somewhat removed from the biggest foreign policy calls. is that your sense from your reporting? >> well, hillary clinton has faced two major challenges, and one is the fact that the white house has usurped a lot of the traditional roles of the state department making the big calls. it also comes at a time where the u.s. foreign policy is so defined by military intervention that the pentagon has a disproportion nat role. but the other challenge is that worldwide the united states has less influence than it did a

decade ago or particularly 20 years ago during the cold war, the immediate aftermath. and so the ability of the united states to influence what's happening is also limited. you see this redrawing of power so that you have a rising china. four years ago hillary clinton's major challenge was not the emerging china/united states relationship. you also have under vladimir putin a truculent russia who has blocked u.s. initiatives, whether it's dealing with syria or trying to deal with iran's controversial nuclear program and again blocking the kind of diplomatic or economic initiatives that would tighten the squeeze on iran. so there are lots of different challenges she's faced. i think her legacy is likely to be centered around the fact that she changed america's image around the world, given what happened, the kind of hostility there was or negative

perceptions among so many countries because of iraq, because of afghanistan, and also the role she played in putting women on the international agenda. it's often dismissed as a social issue but this accounts for half of the world's population and she has kind of institutionalized the u.s. policy on women and their role in society in developing, in politics, and that's a major contribution. >> swanee, you wanted to talk about that. >> yeah. robin, you're right on the money. this fits in what they were saying about after the military we have to come in with soft power. this has been the major piece in my opinion of her legacy. and i would put hillary clinton with george marshall. she redefined security. he came in, he was dealing with all of the things that a secretary of state deals with, but he redefined it and said this is not about revenge on the vanquished. we are going to rebuild the vanquished. i was in europe and i saw the effect of the marshall plan,

which goes on for decades and decades. and hillary clinton in redefining security and calling it inclusive security has changed the nature. >> right. but i think with the marshall plan the key distinction was there was a conceptual -- a reconceptualization that was married to a real policy and money. the question with hillary clinton are the reconceptualization that she's articulated been married to a change in u.s. policy. >> one of the big developments of the bush administration vis-a-vis foreign policy was whether the department of defense took such a leading role. what's been interesting in the obama cabinet is the institutions have pretty much continued that relationship, which is -- so if you like george w. bush's running of foreign policy, there's a lot to like in the obama administration. >> you're saying in terms of the center of gravity institutionally on foreign policy. >> absolutely. and you saw it with kind of the calling of the counterinsurgency

theorists which treads on a lot of tear toe state treads on. hillary has continued that relationship with the defense department and i don't think it's going to change under secretary kerry. >> that's an interesting point. >> it's also true if you look at the george marshall example, that was which the wars were over. these wars are still being fought. the wars of the bush administration are being fought throughout the obama administration. i think just one point. i think it was the election of the first african-american president in this country, a country grounded in the legacies of slavery and genocide, that was what transformed the view for a brief moment at least of the united states around the world. it wasn't hillary clinton. it was the election of the first african-american president. but i think that this question of the mill titarization of forn policy is very much at play right now. it has been for four years. it's that and the combination of special envoys, if you will, as sort of the institutional way that it happened that hillary clinton was not in charge of policy in pakistan, in

afghanistan, in iraq, in israel/palestine, it was completely abandoned, that was all run through the white house. i would say those policies have all failed and i don't hold hillary clinton -- >> so that's to hillary's credit, right? >> she certainly didn't make them succeed. >> no, but listen -- >> she was wrong. >> i want you to respond right after a quick break. >> good. [ roasting firewood ] ♪ many hot dogs are within you. try pepto-bismol to-go, it's the power of pepto, but it fits in your pocket. now tell the world daniel...

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we talked about the legacy of secretary of state hillary clinton and how much it's her legacy. i think that's one of the real questions is how much the first term foreign policy of the obama administration is hillary clinton's legacy and we were talking a little bit about the ways in which the center of gravity has moved away from state and towards dod, the nsc and you wanted to kind of respond. >> yeah. i went to the pentagon right after the end of shock and awe and i said, look, i spent an hour saying here's why you have to bring women in right now. they know where the weapons are, they have got their fingers on the pulse of the community, they understand the reconciliation, the rebuilding, they will

rebuild across lines, you know, et cetera. they have fresh ideas. >> you're saying bringing iraqi women into the process. >> that's exactly right. and they have to be very substantial. not just one voice or two voices out of 24. so this wonderful general who said to me, thank you so much, madam ambassador for coming, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, as soon as we get the place secure, we will think about women's issues, completely missing the point that this is a security issue. now hillary clinton has made a huge difference in three ways. she has integrated into all the planning of state and usaid a requirement that they have to talk about what they're doing to support gender equality, by that they mean elevating women's leadership. second, she's running the national action plan which is actually house eld at td at the house but it reaches across dod, homeland security, treasury, et cetera, but state department is the key to this. and third, and this is key and

this is where you get to the george marshall. she is thinking about the future. she is bringing hundreds of young women from the areas we've been talking about this morning and she's bringing them in together for weeks at a time. these are members of parliament, these are young ministers, et cetera. i saw being in europe, i saw the effect of doing that with the young leaders. they are now -- they are now the prime ministers, they are the foreign ministers, et cetera, and they understand the united states. >> chris, can i add something. >> yeah. >> i think that we're not talking about the elephant in the room. hillary clinton's main legacy is the fact that she has created such status both at home and abroad that she is the natural democratic candidate for president in four years. and that's not just for women's rights but that in terms of what happens next politically in this country is tremendously important. so i think we can't write off that. but i think the irony is that the second obama term is likely

to be more interesting in terms of foreign policy, because we've gotten out of iraq in terms of combat troops. we're going to get out within the next 18 months and probably less from afghanistan. and that opens up a lot of possibilities of where do we engage in a positive way rather than just through military force. and that -- i think she may look back and be a little bit envious of john kerry and the fact that without the issue of re-election and so forth that he may have greater latitude to do some more imaginative things than she did. >> just a few minutes ago you used a very important phrase, her legacy. and i would argue that it's not so much a policy legacy as it is a political legacy. hillary clinton very quickly sort of reconciled with an ardent campaign adversary, namely president obama, but then took distance and showed routinely that she was able to set her een jeown agenda, liter

and figuratively and show herself to be the independent player in washington that she is. rabin picked up on this in my view very importantly, which is that when, not if, she becomes the 2016 democratic candidate, not only will she have the gravitus for that in washington but also also around the world. so i'm doing something new. new age defy shampoo, conditioner and treatment from pantene. it's a system with pro-vitamins and caffeine. 7 signs of aging hair, like dryness and damage, virtually disappear. to make it act up to 10 years younger. my hair act its age? never. new age defy. hair acts up to 10 years younger. from the pantene expert collection.

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♪ [ slap! ] [ slap! slap! slap! slap! ] ow! ow! [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium-rich tums starts working so fast you'll forget you had heartburn. ♪ tum tum tum tum tums hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. with me i have phyllis bennis, josh trevino of the texas public policy foundation, irshaj manji and ambassador swanee hujnt. joining us on satellite is robin wright. and we're talking about hillary clinton's legacy in the week in

which she gave her big headline testimony on benghazi and also a day later or two days later testified at the hearing -- the confirmation hearing for her successor, senator john kerry from massachusetts. talking about the degree to which the first-term legacy of barack obama, what the policy is the first term, the degree to which it is hillary clinton's legacy and whether she has bee marginalized from the major decisions. her legacy is political as much as anything. she is one of the most popular politicians in america right now. in some ways one can say staying clear and not being associated with the big decisions has been to her political benefit because the big decisions are in some ways by nature the most polarizing and controversial and what's not controversial is hugging on disdenlts and professors and members of civil society across the world. >> oh, stop already.

oh, stop. what is this hugging? that's like calling environmentalists tree huggers. please. take that back. >> i'm saying this in a visual sense. this is not what hillary clinton's actual legacy is. i'm saying if you watch the news, right, you see a news clip and hillary clinton is somewhere and she's holding a town hall or talking to students. she's doing things that in the back of your mind if you're an american median voter who is not following foreign policy that carefully, the images that you are being flashed of hillary clinton are generally positive. they don't have to do with these very polarizing decisions. >> that are the key components of what u.s. foreign policy is. u.s. foreign policy for the last four years has been shamed around wars. it's been shamed around military responses to the foreign policy challenges around the world, starting with the iraq war. we now have the state department being in charge of the 15,000 or so armed contractors, if we want to be polite, mercenaries if we want to be a little more accurate, that are in iraq at the behest of the united states

because the agreement between the u.s. and iraq made them withdraw all the soldiers and all the pentagon paid contractors. they were replaced by hillary clinton's guys. we don't hear that. that's not under hillary clinton's actual jurisdiction. it technically is, but in the real world that's not what she's responsible for. the key parts of foreign policy now are afghanistan, israel/palestine. none of these are places where hillary clinton can say that's what i did. >> josh. >> large contractor footprint in iraq, no question about that, but not entirely accurate to say replaced. it's not a one for one replacement. >> we had 100,000 before under the pentagon. we've got 15,000 now. >> it's qualitatively different footprint. >> absolutely. >> to get back to the point we were talking about during the break, unquestionably what everyone thinks of the policy legacy of hillary clinton, politically it is a triumph for her. two polls out in the past ten days, abc, washington post, nbc and wall street journal both

have her hovering around 70% approval. 40% among republicans. what's interesting to me at least in private actions conversations, i don't know who will admit it on air so i guess i will, when you ask a lot of conservatives if they could go back in time to 2008 and who would they support, a substantial number of people say hillary clinton was probably the best choice for president in that year. >> i also think that's incredibly fleeting. i just think that -- >> i don't agree with that. >> i think there's this sort of -- these weird marriages of convenience, right? as soon as -- if she were the nominee conservatives would rediscover all the things they hated about hillary clinton. >> i'm not arguing that the partisan game has suddenly ceased and we've all come to the light but there is still that sent meant there. >> robin. >> chris, can i make a pointing. that is i think we make a real mistake if we look at hillary as a woman and someone advocating

some of the social issues and not understanding she was one of the hawks in the administration. she was very much in favor of the libyan intervention, she was for the surge in afghanistan and she backed at one point in the inner discussion a more active role in syria. and i think this is -- we make a mistake in trying to paint her as the peacenik. >> no, i agree with that. i think the point i'm making is the distinction between what hillary clinton is doing operationally and the image americans have. let's remember, condoleezza rice was popular as she left office as well. she was polling extremely highly. part of that has to do with the fact that being removed from the basic -- the muck of domestic politics is a really good thing for a politician because that's where the issues that divide people the most intensity tend to get wage ed. >> and i agree with what irshad said that this is a political legacy. you quoted her as saying it's a

policy leg aegs and i'm saying it's both. it's political and it's policy. she is bringing in -- she is introducing a new idea. and because it's new, it can be labeled soft around the edges or hugging, like you just said. take it back, take it back. you know, you're going to take it back, i'm serious. >> no, i didn't mean it in the way you heard me. >> there is a new legacy that you can pointing to. it may be her idea but it's not what's operative for four years. >> she had -- >> so really who cares what her personal ideas is, what she'd like to do. >> it's not just her personal idea, it's u.s. security council resolution 1325. >> i know, i've worked on 1325 for many years. >> do you guys want to clue the rest of us in. >> women have to be central in peace making. but i'm saying in the real world we have not seen that. in the real world the war in iraq continues. in the real world the war in

afghanistan is being escalated. in the real world we don't see women playing this major role. it's a goal, it's an aspirational thing. >> right. >> that's all true. but one, 1325, is not hillary clinton's legacy. that went way before she did. and two, the notion that hillary clinton is saying that we should always listen to the united nations is certainly not true. she is a unilateralist with the best of them when it comes to, for example, libya, when it comes to, for example, the surge in afghanistan. this is not somebody who sees international law, the united nations collaboration with other countries as crucial to our foreign policy. >> but it also seems to me that the point about sort of making institutional reforms or weaving things into the institutional framework of the state department might be something that does not bear fruit immediately, right? >> that was my point. you create an institutional change. phyllis, i give you all credit in terms of the militarization of our foreign policy. >> absolutely. >> we also know that the higher

percentage of women that you have in a parliament, the less militarization there is, more budgets swing over to health, education and interestingly environment, economic development. the kinds of emphasis that in fact john kerry has but -- wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. even as you're working on foreign policy, you've got to work on increasing the number of women in the u.s. congress. >> but look, if you're talking just about the question of the impact on women and the role of women, let's look at one aspect of afghanistan, which so often is talked about in the sense of we have to be at war in afghanistan to protect the women. well, let's look at what these 11 years of occupation have led for women. >> that's not what i'm saying, by the way, just so you know. >> but this is a huge argument here and the idea is that women are somehow better off with this occupation, with this war than they would have been otherwise. afghanistan right now is in exactly the same position in the rankings of save the children and unicef on where is it safest for a woman to give birth and where is it safest for a child

to be born and live to her first birthday in the world. afghanistan is the worst place for a woman to give birth, it used to be second, now it's first. and it's the worst place for a child to survive. that's partly because in those -- in those years of occupation, the u.s. has spent a huge amount of money training 350,000 soldiers and police and only 1200 midwives. what if that had been reversed? what would that have meant for women if we're talking about changing policy. >> josh. >> i'm going to attempt the herculean feet of finding common ground with phyllis here. hillary's principal legacy, whatever bears fruit really is the maintenance of pre-existing institutional relationships and roles and that, again, i think is kind of the big story is that there is no story in terms of the change in how state relates to the rest of the policy making apparatus. you know, vis-a-vis the white house, the nsc, everything else. i actually concur with you on

that. that's something. >> oh, dear. >> now, i don't agree that's necessarily a bad thing. >> people who like the status quo. i mean -- >> conservative, right. >> robin wright, author of "rock the casbah," thanks for joining us this morning. really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> and at the table i want to thank irshad manji and ambassador swanee hunting, former u.s. ambassador to austria under president clinton. that was excellent, thank you very much. a high profile hearing tomorrow at guantanamo four years after president obama promised to close the facility. that's next. [ man ] ring ring... progresso this reduced sodium soup says it may help lower cholesterol, how does it work? you just have to eat it as part of your heart healthy diet. step 1. eat the soup. all those veggies and beans, that's what may help lower your cholesterol and -- well that's easy [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup.

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tomorrow the latest hearing in the ongoing military tribunal of alleged 9/11 mastermind will take place at guantanamo bay. a headline that feels like it should be from another era. it's also a headline that likely might produce a little more cognitive dissidence of those celebrating the second inauguration of president obama who rather famously signed an executive order ordering the closure of the detention facility at guantanamo bay. >> this first executive order that we are signing by the authority invested in me as president by the constitution and the laws of the united states of america in order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the department of defense at guantanamo and promptly to close the detention facility at guantanamo consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the united states and the interest of justice, i here by order. and we then provide the process

whereby guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now. >> more than four years later, guantanamo bay is not only fully open and operational but the goal of shutting it down is arguably much further away than it was on that day in 2009. simply put, why is guantanamo bay still open? what's happening there now? and what, if anything, is the plan for the 166 detainees who are still there? joining us is vince warren, executive center of the constitutional rights and adam who reported from guantanamo bay in 2010. it's sort of remarkable to me how prominently guantanamo figured in the public imagination for the years of the bush administration and how outside our view it is now. and i guess my first question is, vince, what is -- what is the plan? i mean just walk me through what is the plan? i know the administration has signed two consecutive national

defense authorization acts in which congress has explicitly prohibited any funds to transfer people from guantanamo to the united states. they have signed it with signing statements saying they don't believe that congress has that authority and that they disagree with it. they still want to close guantanamo and still want to transfer detainees. there is a military tribunal process working its way through. where is all this headed? what is the best case scenario for what the end point is here? >> well, it's a good thing it's a short segment, chris, because there really is no plan as far as anybody can tell. where we are now as you laid out is that we have a political problem, we have a legal problem and we frankly have a human problem. the human being the 166 men that are in guantanamo. 86 of them have already been cleared for release and basically are just sitting there. the obama administration signed the ndaa, which has all of these restrictions and said, yes, this ties our hands, there's not much we can do. but the practical piece is that congress did tie one hand behind president obama's back but he

actually did a very good job of tying the other one behind his back. he could have, and he could exercise authority under the ndaa to say, look, we've got 166 guys in here. i want to close this thing down. i'm going to use the provisions to just transfer some of these men out. that's something that he's clearly not doing. he's going the military commission route. there was a hearing that happened -- a ruling that happened just on friday where the second person that was tried empty military commissions now, that his charges for conspiracy have been thrown out. the first one was thrown out so that tells us that the two big plan that say they had, which was the hold 'em and roll 'em. let's keep these 46 guys in guantanamo and keep them indefinitely but roll the oerss into the military commission does not work. >> so it's a political problem, legal problem, human problem. let's start with the political problem, because i mean the first thing that happened was they signed the order, congress

rebe rebelled, right? here's just a taste what that looks like in terms of the change of opinion from republicans. we'll get to what the administration has done. this is senator lindsay graham in 2009 saying the president is right to want to close guantanamo and then in 2012 reneging. take a look. >> the president is right to want to close guantanamo bay. the reason i say that is i've traveled all over the world, i've been to the war zones many times and every commander tells me if we could start over, it would help us repair damage throughout the world, particularly in iraq and afghanistan. so i think we can safely close guantanamo bay, but we need a plan. >> simply stated, the american people don't want to close guantanamo bay, which is an isolated, military controlled facility, to bring these crazy bastards that want to kill us all to the united states. most americans believe that the people at guantanamo bay are not some kind of burglar or bank robber, they're bent on our

destruction, and i stand with the american people that we're under siege, we're under attack and we're at war. >> i will note that a review of the detainees at guantanamo found that at the most around three dozen were in any way really associated, affiliated with different islamist groups, right? and that might fall into the crazy bastards category, but there's 166 people there. so this is even an internal review by the executive itself that is trying to find people to try gets you to about three dozen. what happened among republicans, josh? >> well, look, the ideological voyage of lindsey graham is like a wandering. you don't know how long it's going to take or where it's going to ending up. i will say more broadly that it's another example that if you liked what george w. bush did in military security and a lot of foreign policy, then you're going to like a lot of what the obama administration has done. the president was very sincere in his desire to close camp

x-ray and the rest of the facilities at guantanamo but he came to realize and this is to his credit that there's a class of people that cannot be prosecuted but are too dangerous to release. so that's where he finds himself. the third geneva convention provides for the detention of enemy combatants so long as the world lasts. so the real question is when is the war against al qaeda over, which is the meta thing hanging over this entire issue. >> do you think that's right, that the obama administration had a road to damascus moment where they came to learn to embrace this, or was it that they got this political pushback from lindsey graham and republicans -- >> i think that there is a certain amount of truth. i wouldn't call it a road to damascus moment. there's a certain amount of truth that the obama administration acquiesced to the late bush administration after the courts got done dismantling the more aggressive policies of the bush administration. they said we're going to keep some of this stuff. that's what happened at the national archives speech in

2009. but i think guantanamo is not an essential facility. we can safely house terrorists inside the united states no matter how dangerous they are. what happened with guantanamo is that the administration bungle eld t ed the politics and they decided they weren't going to prioritize this and it wasn't worth what they felt was losing other aspects of their agenda and democrats in congress got scared and basically said no, we're not doing it. >> so you refer to this paradox, which is the can't charge them, can't release them paradox, right? i want to talk about that because that gets to the legal problem. you said political problem, legal problem, human problem, which is a good way of thinking about guantanamo. i want to talk about the legal problem. what are the legal mechanisms in place? what are the standards of evidence? what exactly are we doing? what is the legal regime that guides this place? there's a huge debate about that. there's a big time story i want to quote right after we take this break. om food particles and bacteria.

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there's some of the group of detainees at guantanamo that essentially everyone agrees shouldn't be there. there's not even a contestation. going to a cousin's wedding and picked up because of bad information. >> i guess i'll be the lone dissenter on that. people cleared by the tribunals shouldn't be there. >> well, that's a lot of them. >> i understand that and i concur on that group. >> it's 86 people out of the 166. >> and let's just be clear that there's some people that have been cleared under both the bush administration and the obama administration. there's a man there right now cleared by both just sitting there. >> let's just talk about those 86 first. of those 86 i'm saying, so the problem with them appears to be this problem of where to send them, right? that's the big problem. it's not that -- i mean they have been cleared, they could go, right? but what country wants to take them and of course you can't just move them to peoria.

i mean i think you could, but go try to sell that to the -- no, i do. i do. i think we should pay these people restitution. >> absolutely. absolutely. >> but so let's put those aside and talk about the legal process that's going forward. right now khalid sheikh mohammed is being tried. he has admitted that he was one of the architects of 9/11, right? the military tribunal process is officially a war crimes process, right? and that is one of the significance of the legal decisions that you've noted where they have vacated two convictions, one under material aid and one under conspiracy because those are not war crimes, right? they're under u.s. code. and there's a battle right now happening between the jag officer and former rhodes scholar who's in charge of running the prosecutions at guantanamo and the administration over whether to continue to try people for

things that are not explicitly in the smaller category of things called war crimes. charlie savage has a great piece in the "times" today, a quote from a law professor on general mar tens who is the jag running this. decisions about prosecuting detainees have become what is feasible as opposed to what is rational. >> and neither of those is about what is legal. this whole rule of law has abandoned in the question of guantanamo. you described it before, chris, you say they're too dangerous to release but there's no evidence to put them on trial. well, in my view and what i think the legal standard of our country has been, we haven't always met it, but supposedly what we're based on if we are a country of laws and not a country of men, as they say, is that if there's no evidence, somebody is not guilty and that means you don't hold them responsible. if somebody is guilty of whether it's war crimes or these civil crimes, and that's a somewhat

more esoteric issue, if somebody is guilty, there's going to be some evidence that can be brought into court. if there is no evidence because the only evidence you have is what you got by torture, it means it's not only illegal but it's unreliable so you don't have evidence that they're too dangerous. >> i think it's really just that if you go and look at the review that the obama administration did, they can't connect a lot of these people to specific incidents. >> right. >> to try them for -- their actions for. >> it's about their institutional affiliations. >> let alone membership. they can't connect these guys to specific incidents and say you did this and this is what we're trying you for which is why they're reliant on these supporting conspiracy charges which could undo the entire system. >> let me just jump in real quick because this is an important piece adam brings up. is that because they can't make those kind of connections moving forward for trials, the fundamental question is what are they still doing -- why were they there in the first place, right? we shouldn't get caught up in the legal process moving

forward, because legal process moving forward actually belies what people have been saying since 2002 when they first brought them in there is that the majority of these people had no legal, factual or other basis to be put in there to begin and we're literally trying to unplug some of the work that the bush administration had done to get these guys there and we're looking at these legal pieces. now, the political piece of this, which is really interesting, is that the obama administration has a huge rule of law problem. they have got a rule of law problem moving back, meaning that the bush administration officials that were responsible for the illegality in the torture are not being prosecuted. they have a rule of law problem moving forward, which is they're trying to get these detainees through the eye of a political needle called the military commissions and they're trying to figure out what can we electrothrow on them? >> the process has been constructed around the paul 6 and the court decisions. >> let's make a broader

pointing. i don't agree that rule of law has been thrown out the window. this is how it's important to get this right. as imperfect as the process has been under this president and the last one, if we don't get this right, if we don't get a tribunal process right, if we don't get the mechanisms right for assessing guilt and innocence among these people, that the battlefieldin sent i've is not to capture but to kill. that's something that we have to think really hard about whether we want to do. so accepting all the critiques of the process, it's very important that this happened and i think the obamacommended for attempting to unravel the knot on this. >> the question is can the process be made right? i think that brings us to the hearing today on khalid sheikh mohammed because she is a special small case of people that was connected to a specific event, has admitted to such. if there was a person who really did commit a war crime, khalid sheikh mohammed looks like the most likely to be that. the question is can the process

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so, adam, you were at -- we're going to have a procedural hearing tomorrow. it's not a hearing of guilt or innocence, it's a hearing about khalid sheikh mohammed. you were at -- what do these trials look like, as someone who sat there and watched one of these hearings? >> well, it's very strange because you actually sit behind sort of a glass, soundproof wall. you have to look up at a monitor and it's delayed by like 30 seconds so that the judge can hit a sound button and block classified information supposedly from being disclosed. often what's classified is typically stuff that's public knowledge but officially secret from the government's perspective. so you're actually watching people talking and moving and doing things and then you see them doing the same things 30

seconds later on this monitor with sounding. it's a really surreal experience. but i think as far as guantanamo itself, the most interesting thing about it is that it's very much, i think, one former bush administration lawyer described obama's policy on this as a kinder, gentler bush. you go to guantanamo and facilitywise it's a much more comfortable place for the detainees. they have a very expensive soccer field but still don't have any of the rights that they were supposed to have or that obama suggested that they would have when he was running for president. >> josh. >> well, so to adam's point there was a very interesting op-ed in "the new york times" from jennifer daskle. she worked very hard -- >> she was part of the guantanamo bar, she went to the administration and now she says keep it open. >> keep it open because of exactly what adam says. the conditions are arguably better than what they would experience in illinois or any of the prisons on the continental united states. >> but this isn't about conditions. >> that's completely 100% nuts.

keep the people that are detained illegally in place because the conditions are much better now than they were eight years ago? that's crazy. >> better than they are in the u.s. >> this isn't about conditions. wait a minute. >> finish your point. >> my point being that i think we're missing the meta picture here which is that we now have a situation in which these military commissions are moving forward. our emphasis is focusing on military commissions and on detainee treatment, but that's really not -- that's not the issue. the issue here is that we have an opportunity to try people in federal courts that we are not looking at at all. regardless of what happens with khalid sheikh mohammed and the military commissions, chris, with respect i think the question is not how does that system work for the easiest case for the administration. in a democracy, the question is how does the legal process work for the hardest -- >> i want to talk about khalid shake mohammed. the reason, i'm not sure it

works for the easiest case. khalid shake meikh mohammed, an think we're being critical and rightfully so. fine, ksm. mastermind of 9/11, said so himself. i don't think there's a whole lot of question about that. pulled off a huge mass murder. there should be accountability and justice for that, all right? now, the guy was tortured, right? he was subject to war crimes. we are now going to have a war crimes tribunal, someone who was the victim of war crimes, who committed war crimes quite clearly. but then the question is eric holder wanted to try him in the u.s. and charles schumer got wobbly, everyone ran away from it, they tried and tried and tried. let's say you try him in the u.s. the first day there's going to be a procedural hearing saying you cannot admit the things that you got out of my client when he was being tortured which is the hearing happening tomorrow. so what should they be doing with him. if you bring him into a civilian court and they say you

tortureded ksm, the law says you've got to let him free. >> the law doesn't say that. it should in my view, if you torture somebody, they should be released. >> even khalid sheikh mohammed. >> he's not subject to this law. i'm saying what u.s. law should be if i were writing law. the point is it doesn't say that. the point is if someone is tortured, you can't use what you get under torture. they have a lot of things on ksm without having to use what they got during torture. >> so having conversations for ten years -- >> and they have got this all on tape. >> so the point is that khalid sheikh mohammed could be tried in a civilian court and a reasonable chance of conviction. >> and the only reason why it doesn't happen is because of the politics of the situation. and that's, again, going back to the big problem. but even looking at military commissions, so you have this case where there was this ruling, let's put this back on the obama administration again. so there's the political piece with congress and there's george bush, but here's what the obama administration can and should

do. they're in the position to decide whether they are going to appeal this court ruling about conspiracy, right, the nonwar crimes, crimes. >> in which a court vacated a conviction. >> the obama administration should not appeal that conviction -- that decision because what that would do is it would move that whole process forward. it would give them a political footing to say, look, either we are a rule of law presidency or we are not and we have to abide by this. let's shift these trials to civilian courts and take the political heat on these things. we'll still get immigration passed, we'll still get gun control passed, but the state of our democracy, the foundation of our democracy rests on these next few days. >> i interviewed in january a famous detainee at guantanamo because of one of the most supreme court cases bears his name. when we come back, i want to play a little clip to remind people of the human stakes here. you talked about political problem, legal problem. there's a human problem. there are human beings who are

rotting in a prison, even if it has nice facilities, with no access to their families, to their lives, and they have been there for in some cases 11 years and they haven't done anything. that's the key point. there are people who have not done anything and they are in there for 11 years. i want to talk about whether the obama administration really does have a plan to close it or are we going to have guantanamo forever right after this. [ male announcer ] zzzquil™ sleep-aid. it's not for colds. it's not for pain. it's just for sleep. because sleep is a beautiful thing™. ♪ zzzquil™. the non-habit forming sleep-aid from the makers of nyquil®. marie callender's turkey breast with stuffing is a great reason to slow down. creamy mash potatoes, homestyle gravy and 320 calories. marie callender's. it's time to savor.

i read that guantanamo and they removed the black bag from my head and the muffs from my ear and blind folds, you know, it was a big shock to me. and i said to myself is this america that respects human rights? during the preliminary investigations, interrogations, i mean, i thought that america was a great country and that there was justice and freedom and human rights and that they

were realized during a day or two that -- or maybe a month that they would realize that i am innocent and they will let me go home to my family, but it was totally the contrary. this is something that i will never forget. >> that's lakhdar boumediene, a guantanamo detainee. is there a plan right now to close the facility? >> i don't think there's a plan to close the facility. obviously the administration is working to transfer the people that they can transfer, but i don't think there's -- there's no plan without congress approving the money to transfer the people that they don't want to release to american soil, which, you know, for all sorts of reasons, you know, even civil liberties groups oppose it as long as the administration is still relying on indefinite detention without trial as a kind of terrorism tool. so there's -- it's hard to see a way in which guantanamo gets closed in the next three years. >> does this mean that we're just erosion?

is it just going to stay open until all of these people die? i'm serious, is that what we're looking at, just sort of bleak years, not months? >> it is really to that point because there is no end game here. everybody kind of agrees that the so-called global war on terror, which in my view was never a war except to the degree that we made it a war, has a defined end date and so the whole geneva convention requirement about the release of prisoners of war after the end of hostilities, how do you define the end of hostilities if you don't have a declared war in the first place. >> i think one of the things this returns us to, which is a theme that has emerged and jay johnson gave that speech to the department of defense talking about an end to this permanent -- this war, this quasi-permanent war state. the president in his inauguration talked about the dangers of a permanent war state. we had barbara lee on the program last weekend who was the one person to vote against the authorization of the use of military force and who is now

sponsoring congressional legislation to repeal the use of military force. it seems whenever we cover anything from this sphere it points back to the question you raised, which is like how long are we in the state of war? can the state of war ever end? if you're in a state of war that can never end, something is wrong. something is definitionally wrong, i think. >> we have some recent history to draw from. when we look at the early cold war there was a state of emergency really from 1948 until some vague point in the 1960s after kennedy essentially. and so it took us, you know, almost two decades to figure out what that looked like and the kind of normalized procedures and processes within that. and it may take that long, which is a real state of war with respect as well. we'll see. >> in respect to what josh is saying in that 20 or 30-year period there was a lot of political posturing that was cropping up. the specter of communism around the world and the u.s. was taking very aggressive policies

with respect to that and we're seeing a lot of that specter come up with respect to terrorism. the question really is not how long will the war last, the question is what the hell is this war that we're fighting? legally, how does that lead to our ability to drop drones on the rest of the world. what you should know for the newsweek ahead coming up next. we've all had those moments. when you lost the thing you can't believe you lost. when what you just bought, just broke. or when you have a little trouble a long way from home...

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in a moment, what you should know for the news week ahead. first, an update on stories we have been following. the time google said u.s. government requests for user data continued to rise in 2012. according to the transparency report, this is a global trend. google has received requests from government information from around the world. 20,000 requests. we have more evidence that austerity is not working in europe to spur economic growth

orut debt. during the third quarter of 2012, government debt compared to the output embark on a regime of cutting spending and raising taxes was barely changed. it rose for three months earlier and up from 86.6% in 2011. before the presidential election, we discussed business owners. murray energy joao robert murray told employees if they did not give money, their jobs would be in jeopardy. in midsummer he said the company would shut down the plant, the red bird west mine which employed 56 people because of the president's policies. murray is starting to hire at the mine, again. the company denies reopening a plant and will hire back 42 or

43 people for a drawdown that will take place over the next several years. so, what you should know for the week coming up. it is now illegal to unlock your smartphone if you purchased it after saturday. unlocking or cracking a phone is a process to use your phone on any cell network, not just the one to which it is contractually tied. they granted an exemption to the act to allow them to engage in the practice. wireless carriers could sue consumer who is purchase and unlock their phones. this is a copyright regime that is broken and dysfunctional. the resume of the president's choice to head up the security and exchange commission. she's a federal prosecutor with experience in white collar crime. you should also know that after serving as a prosecutor, she

went into practice defending white collar titans in the industry. you should know the revolving door continues to spin in relationships between big banks, big law and their regulators. it's why we have not seen accountability in the systemic fraud in the wake of the financial crisis. she has the opportunity to prove your doubters wrong. as the election recedes from memory, thanks to a new study, we know roughly how many people were denied their ability to vote by the long lines in the state of florida. according to the analysis collected, 200,000 voters gave up in election day and never voted because the lines were so long. theodore allen told the sental the number of deterred voters who never went to the polls was larger. you should know the main reason florida officials give for the long lines was the reduction in

early voting days from 14 to eight days passed by the republican legislature and signed by rick scott. a survey of voters nationwide found only 9% of white voters waited a half hour or more to vote compared to black and hispanic voters. republicans attempts to make it harder to vote won't make it harder anytime soon. i want to find out what my guests think we should know for the week coming up. >> this is the second anniversary of the arab springs revolt in egypt. one of the things it's led to, there's huge crises in libya and places related to it, one of the great pieces is that in the palestinian territories, there's a new non-violent tactic under way where they are rebuilding villages on the palestinian land where the israeli settlers are illegally trying to settle.

the government responded with brutality tearing down the encampments and the new villages. this is going forward as a regular, normal process as part of the non-violent process to end it. the immigration reform package. we are going to see a lot of hints and suggestions of what that is going to contain. watch as you do for the proposal that is look like immigration form with movement across the borders in a safe, secure and orderly basis. watch which will give what is done in the failed 1986 simpson reform. >> what we do now versus the future flow question. >> whether we have to revisit it. >> the state department special envoy for the closer at guantanamo left the building. the job has not been filled by

anyone new. >> it's like a bad joke, that job listing. >> right. who wants that job? it is important over the next week and moving forward to answer the question, what is the plan for guantanamo? >> josh took mine. i was going to say to pay attention but i'm going to put a spin on it. pay attention to marco rubio. he's going to put forward things similar to what the president did and how they react to the immigration reform. >> look at the fine print. the devil is in the details about how many people are going to come in and how many are going to stay. we are going to talk about immigration next weekend. i think we are going to see a lot of stuff leaked this week. we'll be talking about that. i want to thank my guests today. phyllis, josh, vince and adam.

thank you all. thank you for joining us. we'll be back next weekend saturday and sunday at 8:00. next, melissa harris-perry. see you next week on "up." for the first week... i'm like...yeah, ok... little did i know that one week later i wasn't smoking. [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix is proven to help people quit smoking. it reduces the urge to smoke. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. if you notice any of these stop taking chantix and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of depression or other mental health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix. don't take chantix if you've had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you develop these stop taking chantix and see your doctor right away as some can be life-threatening. if you have a history of heart or blood vessel problems, tell your doctor if you have new or worse symptoms. get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack. use caution when driving or operating machinery.

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